La Mesa looks at its capital improvement plans

Not enough money in the coffers, plus plenty of projects that need to be fixed, upgraded or replaced.

That's not just a household budget problem, it's also the case in La Mesa, where a capital improvement program plan for the city for 2012-16 was shared with the City Council on Tuesday.

The city's director of public works, Greg Humora, partially went over a list of 129 community projects that the city hopes to fund over the next four years. A final capital-improvement program will be adopted into the two-year budget slated for review in June.

At issue most is the subtotal of unfunded projects or needs, a total close to $69 million, in juxtaposition with the city's general fund, estimated for the next two fiscal years to be $276,400.

"This is a wake-up call on limitations as to what we can now do to address aging infrastructure," City Councilman Ernie Ewin said. "Staff is refining the valuation process. Nothing can be taken for granted. Every tax dollar to best utilization must be real, not lip service."

Without the revenue to make large annual contributions to capital-improvement projects from the general fund, unfunded deferred maintenance and replacement capital costs become more critical each year, Humora explained to the council.

From sewers, streets and storm drains to public buildings and parks, the city's to-do list is stacked.

The city's municipal pool needs close to $500,000 in renovations by 2015, causing Councilman Dave Allan to wonder if the city shouldn't just replace the pool, which he said "is almost like a historic landmark."

City Manager Dave Witt said that was "a good example of our dilemma," and noted that the community center and other buildings in and around La Mesa might also qualify as historic structures and that the city was in "a long process of figuring out how to replace those facilities but in the meantime keep them operational."

Ewin noted that the Junior Seau Sports Complex at La Mesita Park, which sits next to Parkway Middle School and the Dallas YMCA, will need a major upgrade in 2013.

At least $500,000 will be needed to replace the artificial turf on the two full-sized football and soccer fields within the next two years. Ewin said he hoped to get funds earmarked for the complex, calling it "such a key investment."

At one time, the La Mesa-Spring Valley School District was poised to help pay for upgrades to the field, but now "they don't have the funds to step up," Ewin noted.

Mayor Art Madrid said that while he empathized with them and understood that "schools are facing huge challenges as are the cities," he also noted, "this is the second time we've been hung out to dry by the school district."